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ECPR 2004 Joint Sessions of Workshops

Uppsala University

Workshop 2

The Political Representation of Social Interests

in Central and Eastern Europe

The Europeanization of the ECE Social Democracy

The case of HSP in an ECE context

Attila Ágh

Introduction

The Europeanization of the Social Democratic Parties in the new member

states has reached a turning point with the entry; and especially with the coming

elections to the European Parliament in June 2004. At the same time, in their domestic

development the Social Construction of Democracy is high on the agenda in East

Central Europe (ECE) after a long decade of political and economic transformation

when they are already in the stage of democratic consolidation and EU accession. The

ECE countries have arrived at a crossroad, since parallel with the EU accession they

have to decide what kind of public sector they will create from the scratch and how

the new democratic state will be built. This paper focuses on the present situation of

the Hungarian Social Democracy in an ECE context in order to discover the

connection between social interests and political parties in the Europeanization

process. It tries to combine the bottom up and top down approaches by presenting the

activities of the leftist party elites to solve social problems and represent societal

interests on one side, and by describing the forms and intensity of popular pressure

from below on the other.

The formation of the ECE parties, indeed, has been to a great extent an elite-

dominated process and the political-party elites have used several forms of political

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marketing to attract support from among the populations without a real, meaningful

social responsiveness. It is equally true that the ECE parties - at least in rhetoric and

mostly before the elections - have tried to follow the demands of their constituencies,

so they have had to pursue to some extent social interests-driven politics. But the main

party formation principle in ECE has been the Europeanization as a tremendous

pressure by the West European party types on the emerging proto-parties: only those

have survived that could fit into the pre-existing party-types with an “EU license”, i.e.

have received an “accreditation” from the West. For the Hungarian Left the only

alternative has been to become a “Europeanized Left with close ties to SI and PES”

and all the other party alternatives have failed - marginalized or disappeared.

Consequently, at political level the paper covers first the issues related to

problem how the Hungarian Socialist Party can follow the major transformations in

the Western Social Democracy, including the social-democratic concept of state. This

can be shown through its role in solving the problems of “welfare systemic change” in

general and in its response to the challenge of the elections to the European

Parliament as a mobilization of its electoral base in particular. Second, this paper

focuses on the changes in the external role versus the internal structure of the HSP

with a contrast between external and internal Europeanization, regarding also the

painful road from politics to policy, i.e. from ideologically driven political battles to

the concrete policy-making processes. The paper concludes that although the

Hungarian Social Democracy has made special efforts to solve the problem of the

losers of systemic change and the EU accession, still this series of challenges have

created hard times for the Hungarian Left that have been very similar everywhere in

ECE pointing to the difficult start of Social Democracy in the westernmost “East”, in

Central Europe. The final conclusion is that all these contradictions can be

summarized in the EU representation paradox of the ECE societies and polities that

has been particularly strong in Hungary.

The birth pangs of the new Social Democracy in Hungary

There is no need for a long presentation of the Hungarian Left and its major

party, the Hungarian Socialist Party, since it has been so often analyzed that it may be

one of the best known parties for the international political science in ECE. Its early

emergence in October 1989 made HSP, instead of becoming a loser, into a strong

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actor in systemic change. At the same time it was overloaded by the technocratic and

pragmatic tradition of the reformers in the 1980s. The HSP was in fact the only case

of institutional and membership discontinuity among the so called successor parties,

since the former party – Hungarian Socialist Workers Party – was legally dissolved

and only about 20.000 members out of 800.000 members of HSWP became HSP

members, joined by the new members of equal size (20.000). Thus it developed a

membership between 35.000 and 40.000 with a decreasing number of former

members. Despite its relatively small size the HSP has had still the biggest

membership of an organized party in Hungary. The HSP may be considered a

minimal size people’s party, representing at least a quarter of all social strata, still

with an overrepresentation of urban and educated masses. Hungary has developed a

bipolar party system in which the HSP represents the centre-left side and Fidesz

(Hungarian Civic Alliance) the centre-right side of the political spectrum. Due to the

increasing party polarization the HSP has enjoyed a stable mass support about two

million voters out of eight million that means that it has regularly been supported by

at least about 35 percent of active citizens. Its electoral success depends on its

attraction for the voters in the centre that has given twice (in 1994 and 2002) a

governing majority to the party.1

The ECE parties have gone through the three periods of the social movements,

“forum” parties as umbrella organizations and parliamentarization. It is also well

known that the ECE parties can be described according to the two axes of Left and

Right, and Europeanization and Nation-centrism (or Traditionalism). This typology

gives us four basic types of the ECE parties: Europeanized Left and Europeanized

Right, and Nation-centric Left and Nation-centric Right. The HSP belongs to the

Europeanized Left but Fidesz has been moving from the position of the Europeanized

Right more and more to that of the Nation-centric Right (Lewis, 2003). Following

their general ideological orientations, the ECE parties joined their Party Internationals

in the nineties. Furthermore, the stages of democratic transition and democratic

consolidation have to be distinguished. These stages of internal development by and

large coincide with those of Europeanization as stages of association and accession.

The association period demanded only a general Europeanization from parties and

governments, the present accession period presupposes a detailed Europeanization as

an acceptance of the full body of acquis communautaire. This new task overloads

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their capacity and produces a performance crisis for the ECE parties, which will be

finally analyzed as the EU representation paradox.2

The birth pangs of the HSP or the new Hungarian Social Democracy can be

summarized in the following social and political processes: (1) the emerging social

crisis in democratic transition causing political demobilization and the trap of

materialist needs for the HSP; (2) the protracted social crisis in the nineties provoked

an urgent need of “welfare systemic change”; (3) this general problem has been

aggravated for HSP by a special problem of “poverty” of communication. It means

that the HSP has not been able to reach the poor, or in general terms its “natural”

social base. Just to the contrary, the more educated, more urban and more situated

have voted for HSP, since it has not elaborated a proper discourse for the marginal,

country-side and uneducated people. All these problems are rather common for the

ECE Left and producing series birth pangs for the new Social Democracy that I try to

analyze briefly and mostly in the Hungarian case.3

The Western analysts usually start from two assumptions in discussing the

ECE Social Democracy: “Obviously, the building of capitalism is not a genuinely

social-democratic task. However, modern, Western social democracy has made its

peace with modern capitalism to whose shaping it has largely contributed. In the

transition countries, social democrats had the opportunity to create capitalism with a

human face from the scratch.” (Crook et al., 2002: 17). The first assumption is too

rigid in using the term “capitalism” that was – although in very distorted form - the

“past” of the ECE countries until the late forties. It came back again, in another

distorted form, in the late eighties. Building capitalism may not be the best term to

describe the return to market economy with its dire social consequences in the

relatively backward, semi-peripheral ECE countries. If this is so then the case of

Spain, Portugal and Greece was very similar in the seventies and eighties. The second

assumption is that social democrats had the opportunity the create capitalism with a

human face. Supposedly this is a reference to the ideal Western social democratic

model like Denmark. It is an even more fragile argument and, moreover, this is a

dangerous illusion. The “existing capitalism” in ECE has, in fact, an “inhuman face”,

hence one could raise even the responsibility of the ECE social democrats for not

taking the opportunity to “build” a better capitalism. It is particularly important that

the PES has regularly emphasized the importance of the “economic and social

governance in the Union”, even for the EU Constitution (Amato, 2003).

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Actually, the socio-economic and political development in ECE has not been

unilinear but full of cyclical moves in all respects. In addition, it has not been

dominated by domestic factors and actors but by the dual challenge of

Europeanization and globalization. Simply said, the role of external factors and actors

has been so overwhelming that the maneuvering room for the domestic actors,

including social democrats, has been minimal. In the democratization process, first of

all at its beginning, the ECE societies and states have been very week to resist the

outside pressure. Nor the actors have had clear ideas about the process and the

alternatives. Yet the weakness of states and missing preparedness of domestic actors

have not been the main reasons for producing capitalism with an “inhuman face” in

ECE countries. It has been the tremendous outside pressure that has left a very small

elbow room to manage the course of domestic developments. Still there have been

some alternatives for domestic actors, therefore the development of the ECE countries

has not followed the same path. However, there have been no basic differences among

them, just some versions of “inhuman” capitalism.

Otherwise, the Western social democrats who have analyzed the actions of the

ECE social democrats have pointed out with justification that the ECE social

democrats have made a big effort towards the “final goal” of transition, i.e. towards

some kind of welfare state: “The final goal of transition (the type of economy, society,

welfare state) has been hardly clear during the first years of transition, though

probably clearer among the left who preferred a European welfare state than among

the right who oscillated between Thatcherism, neo-liberalism, economic nationalism,

social conservatism and religious concepts of society. The preferences of voters in

Central and Eastern Europe have generally been in favour of less inequality but they

have had no clear strategies about how to achieve that goal.” (Crook et al, 2002: 17).

It is true that there has been a big difference between Left and Right concerning the

strategy for transition, yet the simple fact has not been mentioned that the ECE Right

has received much more assistance from the West than the ECE Left from its

counterpart. Referring the voters’ preferences is a very dangerous argument because it

raises the spectre of populism, the dead ally of democratization, since the standard of

living had to be decreased anyway in the years of economic crisis management and it

was impossible to manage the crisis management with a popular approval or wide

popular support. Furthermore, this argument goes against the proper statement that

“even in apparently fast reforming countries, like Hungary or the Czech Republic,

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social-democratic parties had to implement sometimes harsh policies in order to

establish capitalism because their conservative or liberal predecessors had failed to do

the job.” (Crook et al, 2002: 17).

This has been, indeed, the real trap situation for the ECE Social Democracy.

The ECE Right has not been able and ready for socio-economic crisis management

and it has deepened the crisis with its counter-productive policies, even more, it has

moved toward social and national populism to win elections. The ECE Left has to

face the job of crisis management and at the same time the ensuing loss of popularity

as an “award” for the good but severe crisis management. The Hungarian and the

Polish leftist governments did a good job in crisis management in the mid-nineties and

created the conditions for the sustainable economic growth but their surgical

operations were too painful for the populations and they failed at the next elections.

Before, during and after the crisis management, in fact, the “disappointed population

reacted angrily” and popular satisfaction with the market economy and democracy

drastically declined in the nineties (Crook et al, 2002: 18). However, one has to see

and analyze this process as a paradox, since in order to attain the long term goal of

systemic change in political, economic and social consolidation this popular

dissatisfaction has been inevitable despite the fact that this has meant an almost

unbearable burden for a leftist party. The only real question is when and how this

transition comes to an end and here the EU accession comes in as a hope: “The

greatest hope and fastest chance of solving the dilemma, however, still lies with the

accession to the EU.” (Crook et al, 2002:18). To the issue of second crisis and the new

trap of materialist needs emerging from the EU accession and the Europeanization of

the ECE social-democratic parties I will return later.

Nonetheless, when discussing the positive perspectives one should not forget

about two diverging social processes. First, the high unemployment may be, in fact it

has proven to be, transitory. It has been a generational affair and/or connected with

the re-arrangement of the economic structure between industry and services as well as

between state and private sectors. Second, however, the high polarization of wealth

and income will be a long term phenomenon, with a risk of becoming the deep

structure of the ECE societies “for ever”. The high social polarization has produced

some kind of social model alien to the Social Construction of Democracy and against

any effort of the ECE Social Democracy to complete the political and economic

transformation with a social one, with the so called welfare systemic change. The

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growing electoral abstention in ECE has been connected with these “social costs of

transition”, in which the social deprivation of the losers coincided with their political

“dis-empoverment”. The socially deprived strata or those temporarily or permanently

disadvantaged by economic transformations have been less organized and more

deprived politically than their counterparts in the West. It has been a fatal blow to the

Social Democracy in ECE because its potential constituency, and the virtual or actual

allies, has been marginalized and/or disoriented and discouraged. Thus, the ECE

social-democrats have been confronted with the unsolved problems of social costs of

transition and have been unable to pursue a genuine leftist socio-economic program

for many years, until the late nineties when the national economies recovered and

some efforts could be started for the social recovery as well.

The collapse of the former regime was accompanied with a deep social crisis

but the systemic change has produced a new one. In fact, beyond this, the entire

process was overloaded by a special – so far hardly noticed – contradiction. The

actual exclusion of the impoverished masses from politics has been the price paid for

the survival of democratization in order to avoid the danger of populism (see

Greskovits, 1998). The whole controversial nature of democratic transition originates

from the fact that all ECE countries, including Hungary, underwent a transformation

recession losing about one quarter of their GDP. It resulted in large-scale

impoverishment and increasing social inequality, in an alarming degree of social

dislocation and in a big deterioration of the standard of living. Despite its relatively

better position, the social and economic crisis in the nineties shook Hungary as well

and it could not avoid the process of deep social dis-integration either. Exclusion,

subordination and non-recognition characterize the first phase of democratization

even in the most advanced Central European countries. Simply said, as a result of

economic exclusion (large unemployment) and social fragmentation (polarization and

marginalization of social strata) there has been a huge contrast in the political

transformation between the dis-empowerment of the losers and the empowerment of

the winners. Political recognition and social inclusion have been still largely missing

in the Central European young democracies where the exclusion and subordination of

the losers have been the rule. The Social Construction of Democracy has not only

been delayed but it was deeply disturbed and distorted even in Hungary by these

successful political and economic processes consolidating the base for democracy.

The most important issue is that successful democratic transition in Hungary has

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created some new contradictions that have presented the major obstacle to the further

democratization. Formulated in a simplified way, the removal of the economic deficit

created a serious social deficit and the new problem is how to cope with this new

deficit. Moreover, early democratization led to the political demobilization of the

masses. The new agenda is how to mobilize and empower them now, at the stage of

early consolidation that gives a special task to the ECE Social Democracy. In general,

these issues have also been discussed as the “social costs of transition” and the

“political costs of transition” (on the winner-loser issue in general see Tang, 2000).

The trap of materialist needs means basically that the drastic reductions of

incomes produced a return to the basic “materialist” needs in the nineties and the post-

materialist period, which began to some extent in the late eighties, had been

postponed. Altogether, as mentioned above, in ECE there were two parallel processes

in the nineties: the drastic reduction of real incomes on the one hand and increasing

social and regional polarization on the other. Real incomes decreased by about thirty

per cent compared to the 1989 level, and have returned to that level only in the early

2000s. By this time social polarization has been completed, a wide gap emerged

between the lowest and highest income brackets, since it has increased in a decade

from 1:3 to 1:10. The decline of incomes was accompanied by a drastic reduction in

public services: A near collapse of the public sector threatened the ECE countries in

the early nineties. Under permanent budgetary pressure public services were

drastically reduced, in some cases completely abandoned. This reduction had two

consequences in the nineties. Its direct consequence was not only a decrease of the

delivery of public services and the erosion of the maintenance of public institutions,

but an important and even more shocking consequence was the drastic reduction of

salaries and wages of all public employees. Instead of a general emphasis on the

emergence of a middle class, as the slogan of the new democratic society has

demanded, there was a very marked process of declassification of the middle class

(for instance teachers and doctors) in the nineties with only a small recovery in the

2000s. The disintegration of the formerly large middle-income strata has produced an

upper class of successful entrepreneurs and those professionals who have moved from

public sector to private economy. All in all, by the mid-nineties it resulted in the

exclusion of large groups of professionals, including most civil servants, from the

emerging middle class and the recent reintegration has been slow and uncertain. The

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final result has been the demobilization of voters generated by the economic and

social exclusion from the productive world.

The demobilization of the masses was in some ways a conscious process in the

early nineties by parties and politicians eager to avoid populism. But this was even

more an unintended result of economic and social marginalization discussed above. In

both ways it has generated an “unstructured political market” with a low membership

density for the parties (Beyme, 2001: 139, 153). The two major institutional aspects of

demobilization have been in the world of civic associations and industrial relations.

First, there has been a pervasive lack of both civil organizations representing various

losers’ groups, and channels, other than voting in elections, for civil control over state

policies in general. Second, the trade unions were de-legitimized and marginalized, so

the interests of employees remained mostly underrepresented at both national and

shop floor levels. The trade unions were struck by the rapid de-industrialization and

declining wages and, since they could not cope with the problems of unemployment

and impoverishment; they have lost their membership to a great extent. The reform of

the trade unions originated from the communist system has been lagging behind and

the newly organized trade unions have usually not been proper partners for the ECE

Social Democracy. Actually, de-politicization has been much wider than the electoral

demobilization. People have turned away from politics in ECE because they have felt

that politics has not dealt with their real problems that is has shown a very low level

of “social responsiveness”.4

The external and internal Europeanization of the ECE parties

So far little attention has been paid to the participation of the ECE parties in

the European party system. This process has its idiosyncrasies as a contrast to the

former extensions: “With each earlier enlargement, the EU has taken on a country

whose political families are recognisably the same as those in the existing member

states. By contrast, not all East European countries show signs of developing party

systems that centre around Christian and Social Democrats, Conservatives and

Liberals as the dominant political forces.” (Hix, 1997: 3). First, the real question is

whether one can say something common about the parties in Central and Eastern

Europe at all, since the term “post-communist” countries has become an empty shell

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and by now sweeping over-generalizations have lost their validity. Second, the ECE

parties with all their infantile disease, certainly, “are centered” on the major party

families of the West and have formally joined them. As Geoffrey Pridham has pointed

out in several works, the “transnational party linkages” have played a vital role in the

development of the ECE parties, leading to a “party-political convergence in Europe”

(see Pridham, 2000).

The dominant approach on the impact of the EU on the national party systems

may be called the “limited impact” school developed by Peter Mair (Mair, 2000). This

approach has recently appeared in some other papers discussing “parties resisting

change” in Europeanization (Raunio, 2003). Paul Lewis extends this approach to the

ECE parties (Lewis, 2003: 6) and discusses more the indirect impact of the

Europeanization on the ECE parties. In my view, the reason for this interpretation lies

in the missing distinction between the external and internal Europeanization of the

ECE parties, since the Europeanization has been very “direct” or hard on one side,

and very “indirect” or soft on the other. I understand by external Europeanization an

elite-based process through which contacts with and/or membership in the

international party organizations have emerged and the ECE parties’ programmes,

values, public discourses have changed accordingly. The internal Europeanization

would be a process reaching and transforming the membership, the constituency of

the ECE parties and their relationship to the civil society through which the internal

party organizations and popular beliefs change accordingly. Concerning the external

Europeanization, the categorization developed by James Sloam can be very helpful,

since he distinguishes ideational transfer networks for ideas and electoral

programmes, policy transfer networks for policy alternatives produced by the

epistemic communities to solve certain problems and information networks between

Western and ECE parties (Sloam, 2003: 22-24). These networks have been very

active, indeed, and through them the external Europeanization has proceeded quickly

and it has reshaped the ECE Social-Democratic parties in their outward-oriented

workings.5

The contrast between external and internal Europeanization of the ECE parties

can be explained as a “push and pull” effect. For the ECE parties the EU accession is

a must, first of all for the Left, since all their political actions have also been propelled

by their desire to get accepted by, and integrated to, the EU Social Democracy.

Nonetheless, this push effect has been counter-balanced by a pull effect, since there

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has been a worry about the second generation of losers in the European integration

through a “cheap enlargement” (Michaele Schreyer). The social-democratic analysts

see these “hopes and fears”. They note that the EU accession will increase inequalities

not only among social strata but among the richer and poorer regions as well. The

analysts present this issue as a paradox: “Social democrats have been the strongest

advocates of accession in many countries. (…) Why did social democrats support EU

membership in spite of the costs and partial drawbacks for their own clientele?” Their

answer is correct but not complete: “Joining the EU will narrow the range of options

among the possible varieties of capitalism to be established in Central and Eastern

Europe substantially. That basically is a desirable outcome for social democrats in the

applicant countries as the options compatible with EU membership tend to be social

democratic in a wider sense, i.e. they are based on the European ‘social model’ as

expressed and defined by the Treaties of the EU and the acquis communautaire,

including the European Social Charter and the Charter of Human and Civil Rights.”

(Crook et al, 2002: 22-23). The attractivity of the European social model is beyond

any doubt but, in addition, the ECE countries need the EU also as an engine for the

economic growth as well as a safeguard for the further democratization. Hopefully,

the social price for the EU membership that has been paid in a mid-term period -

calculating with a five year period of relative troubles and disappointment - will be

compensated in the long term by getting closer to the European social model.

However, this price paid by some social strata will turn into a political price paid

almost exclusively by the ECE Social Democracy, since it presents for the ECE

populations a second trap of the materialist needs with a second generation of losers.

The ECE social democratic parties have been sandwiched between the EU

requirements for adjustment and the popular disappointment caused by this

adjustment.

Conversely, although the ECE leftist parties have been closely tied to the

Western counterparts, still their domestic party developments have been diverging

from the Western highways to a great extent. One has to see also the categories of

mass parties, peoples’ parties and/or cadre parties against this background of the

above described painful social transition. My hypothesis is that the ECE social-

democratic parties fall into the category of “small peoples’ parties”, which includes a

contradiction between the relatively small size of the party membership and the all-

representative character of the party, since these parties comprise all social strata to

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some extent. The newly emerging ECE parties are usually only cadre parties, i.e.

collections of office seekers. People do not join parties in ECE, not just because of the

political demobilization but first of all because they are busy with the everyday

burden of adjustment to the new realities, so simply they do not have time and energy

for the party business. The result is the “senilization” of party memberships as the

domination of senior citizens among the members of all parties. It seems so that the

ECE social-democratic parties have escaped this trap of senilization, since they have

attracted more members than the other parties and from all social strata. There has

been a prejudice that the relatively bigger membership is due to the successor

character of these parties, but the only real mass parties are the unreformed ruling

parties (as the Czech Communist Party or its sister parties in the Balkans). In fact, the

reformed parties have a relatively small membership with a large and increasing

percentage of the new recruits. There has been a membership paradox as well, with

the over-representation of more educated and higher income strata in both

membership and constituency for the ECE social-democratic parties, combined with

an under-representation in the less educated and lower income brackets.6

Nowadays the elaboration of a genuine social-democratic program in ECE has

become necessary in order to represent those who are silent politically and to invite

them back to politics as partners. This is the future dimension of the party-society

relationship as the task of social inclusion or cohesion with the re-integration of losers

to society. It has been re-enforced by the EU accession both negatively and positively,

since this process creates new losers but offers an opportunity as well for the social

cohesion through the sustained economic growth and the EU requirements.

Democratization and marketization have been very successful processes in ECE, yet

there is still a long way to go for the recovery of the standard of living and for a real

“participatory revolution” or “deliberative democracy”. By the early 2000s the

disintegration, segmentation, or fragmentation and social exclusion, described above,

have created an obstacle to social integration and political recognition. Thus, the

“national re-unification” has been left for the newly elected social-democratic

governments. Hence, Eastern Enlargement has to be seen as a two-sided process of

integration both inside and outside. The dual challenge of globalization and

Europeanization makes this domestic integration more difficult for ECE. In the mid-

nineties, at the time of the first leftist governments, the drastic economic crisis

management was the most urgent task. Now, sustainable economic growth since 1996

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has created some economic preconditions for “systemic change in welfare”. The

patient decade is over in ECE and now people demand the catching up with the EU in

wages and salaries as well. The Medgyessy government (2002-2006) has realized that

it has to “unify” Hungary through involving a large majority of the population into the

economic, social, and political activities. It has declared itself “the government of the

national centre” to indicate its efforts for a large-scale program of “re-unification” of

the country by solving the new social crisis and re-integrating people to the “nation”

or “society”.7

Paradoxically, the serious treatment of Euro-issues in the ECE parliaments

was hindered in the nineties not so much by the anti-European parties but by a too

vague commitment of the parliamentary parties to Europeanization, since they had no

definitely outlined Europeanization policies, programmes or profiles of their own in

the concrete terms of the EU policy universe. Just a few marginal parties produced

anti-European ideas and sentiments, and even some markedly populist parties in the

ECE parliaments usually avoided direct confrontation with Europeanization. These

small, extreme rightwing populist parties found various indirect forms and ways to

communicate their resistance against European integration, in most cases by

reinterpreting “Europe” according to their own tastes. Otherwise, there was a vague

and nebulous consent about Europeanization that did not allow, directly and publicly,

for articulating anti-European ideas and interests. However, the situation changed

during the accession negotiations and in the course of preparation for the referendums

about accession, since anti-European voices might have been heard more loudly. The

clear cases of both hard and soft party-based Euroscepticism can be described in the

late nineties in all candidate states (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2001: 20, in a more

detailed way Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2003).

The real turning point came in the late nineties when the soft party-based

Euroscepticism appeared in its strong form at the governing right-wing parties in

Hungary and elsewhere: “Soft Euroscepticism is taken up by two parties in the

governing coalition, FIDESZ as the major party and the Smallholders Party as the

junior partner. FIDESZ’s leader, premier Victor Orban, has increasingly adopted

‘national interest’ Euroscepticism’.” (Taggart and Szczerbiak, 2001: 18). It means that

even the more consolidated conservative parties have recently made a populist turn or

presented some Euro-skeptic ideas: “By the late 1990s, however, the lack of real

debate, and the perception that these countries were kowtowing to an exploitative EU,

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began to create the opportunities for more populist leaders to arise and succeed, even

where populism had earlier been discredited. Thus, in its rightward shift, Viktor

Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary exploited popular discontent and blamed the EU.

Similarly, former Czech prime minister Vaclav Klaus, once ousted from power,

turned to Euro-skepticism as a way to regain popularity, speaking out the EU’s

‘creeping silent unification of the continent’. In Poland, finally, a fourth of the seats in

the fall 2001 elections have been claimed by anti-Union parties” (Grzymala-Busse

and Innes, 2003:69).8

The emerging ECE parties tried to demobilize civil society associations in the

early nineties. Consequently, there has been a sharp contrast between the ECE young

democracies and the Western developments concerning the participatory revolution

from the very beginning of the ECE party developments. There was already a drastic

decline of social and political participation in ECE, right after the early mobilization

phase of systemic change and even by now the participatory revolution has not been

yet completed. This contrast between “East” and West, as the rise and decline of

participation in ECE, offers the key to understanding the weaknesses of political

representation in ECE. A short summary of these weaknesses is sufficient here,

indicating its reasons in a historical sequence. First, the “missing middle” is the

traditional weakness of meso-politics with its intermediary organizations and social

actors in ECE. It was reinforced by state socialism and it is still one of the most

important characteristics of ECE democratization. Second, there has been a

demobilization of masses and social movements by the new power elites in the party

formation process. The lack of political organizations for the meaningful participation

later on has caused a further shock to participatory behaviour. Third, the “over-

particization”, that is, the quasi monopolization of the political scene by the parties

has created an alienation from politics and low trust in the new democratic

institutions, and it has kept its long standing effects (see Ulram and Plasser, 2001).

The ECE systemic change began with the mobilization of masses in social

movements for a breakthrough of politics as a “movementist” aspect of civil society.

But after the breakthrough in democratic transition the parties managed to demobilize

them and build up a system with the parties as quasi-monopo1istic po1itica1 actors.

Thus, the initial large mobi1ization did not generate a participative culture as a new

tradition in the “movementist” dimension, only in “associationist” dimension, due to

the robust evolutive development in the nineties. Participation deficit by

15

demobilization, however, provokes crisis in representation. It is important to discern

the well functioning representation from the representation deficit as its partial failure

and from the representation crisis as its complete failure but and these forms correlate

closely with those of participation. The distortions in democratic representation are

not only the problems of the ECE states, since they have been mentioned in the

consolidated democracies as well, most often concerning the EU and its institutions.

However, it is true that they come to the surface in the ECE countries in a more acute

way. The above distinction between deficit and crisis is, of course, even more

important for the new ECE democracies where proper participation and adequate

representation is the exception. Therefore, the ensuing deficit or the crisis in

representation is the rule, of necessity, since proper participation is missing and the

whole system of representation is still in the making. Satisfaction with representative

democracy has been very low. It is better to term it as dissatisfaction and frustration.

This dissatisfaction appears concerning both the low levels of political efficacy and

trust in public institutions, obviously with a close correlation between the two. In

addition, this asymmetrical character re-appears within the meso- and micro-politics,

since as the middle class organizations are the most developed, so the economically

advantaged have a “voice” and the disadvantaged have also remained politically

“silent”, and some may have only an “exit” option, again.

Consequently there has only been a half-convergence with the West so far,

producing an external versus internal contrast in Europeanization. In addition, there

has been a massive resource transfer for the parties on the Right from the West

(including the Western church organizations). There has been nothing similar on the

Left, although some foundations like the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have played a very

important role in the ECE democratization. The massive resource transfer for the

Right from the West has been one of the reasons for the asymmetrical situation in the

civil society organizations also in political aspects that created a clear domination of

rightist and church-oriented civic associations in the meso- and micro-politics.

Strangely enough, the Left is strong “below”, among the population at large, and

“above” as a well organized party, but rather weak “in between”, in the organized

civil society.

Conclusion: The new Challenges for the ECE Left in the EU

16

The extended competences of the EP and the intensified PES-EPP competition

in the EP have led to a genuine transnationalization or Europeanization of elections

and to the emergence of the real all-European parties. Compared to the earlier

situation by the 2000s “the EP party system has become more consolidated and more

competitive as the powers of the EP have increased”. In fact, “The party groups in the

EP constitute a highly developed, relatively stable, and reasonably competitive party

system. (…) Also, in voting behaviour, the EP parties are highly cohesive and

increasingly so.” (Hix et al, 2003: 311, 327). As a result, the ECE Social Democracy

has been facing two new challenges in the EU: first the new social-democratic

concept of state as “reinventing the state” and second, the cooperation with the PES

faction in the European Parliament, a painful march from politics to policy as

“reinventing the party”. The task of reinventing the state concerns both the Social

Construction of Democracy and the creation of EU-conform institutions. These efforts

ran into difficulties again in 2003 with the trap of materialist needs anew, since the

recession of world economy has caused serious troubles in the ECE states such as

decreasing economic growth and increasing state indebtedness. The “reinventing the

party” means a basic change from pragmatism to strategy, from abstract-ideological

politics to public policy orientation with an expert capacity-building inside the party.

This task overlaps with the preparations of the EP elections, and an efficient

membership in PES according to the expectations of the international social

democracy.

Responding to the series of challenges, in October 1989 the HSP accepted the

program of Socialist International, in 1995 became full member of SI and, finally, in

May 2003 of PES as subsequent steps of external Europeanization. Some timid efforts

for the internal Europeanization have recently followed these steps, first in March

2003 the HSP congress turned towards ideology, by deciding to write a strategically-

oriented program for the next, October 2004 congress. Second, Péter Medgyessy, the

non-party member prime-minister of the HSP visited the meeting of social-democratic

leaders on Progressive Governance in London in July 2003 at the invitation of Tony

Blair. Later, his role in party has been extended to the strategic and programmatic

aspects as well. At least a “revolution in terminology” starts echoing some Western

efforts but serving specific domestic audiences as the “national centre” to invite the

centrist forces to cooperate with the Left. In the same way, the “coalition politics” has

been followed by identifying and mobilizing the two major currents of the Hungarian

17

Left: the “civic Left” with its urban traditions of social tensions and “country-side

Left” (or people’s Left) with its focus on regional-local inequalities. As a result of the

above mentioned efforts, the HSP looks like quite Europeanized from outside in its

contacts with the SI and PES. Yet, it has many weaknesses inside, i.e. concerning its

internal Europeanization, namely in its organization, strategic program and policy-

making capacity. Its main party organization is asymmetrical because its “satellite”

organizations around the party are weak or missing; its strategic program is still not

well elaborated and its theoretical discussion has not yet been integrated in that of the

international Social-Democracy. Finally the expert-base of the HSP for dealing with

policy areas – or with the European policy universe – has not been developed enough.

In such a situation, and with the unsolved problems of welfare systemic change, faces

nowadays the HSP the new challenges of the EU membership, albeit the EU push for

decentralization may help to solve problems of absentist state and missing social and

territorial actors in Hungary.

In Hungary these new challenges have appeared in the sharpest way in ECE,

since the Medgyesy government in early 2002 had produced an ambitious program of

welfare systemic change that ran against the negative processes in the world economy

by early summer 2003 and the slowdown of the Hungarian economy has devalued the

government program of welfare systemic change. In addition, there has been a

conflict between the welfare systemic change efforts in Hungary and the recent EU

plans to decrease the solidarity principle and increase the EU competitiveness (see the

Sapir and Tarschys Reports). These circumstances provoked a new tension in

Hungary in the party leadership between the “centrist” government line suggesting a

correction in economic policy to tailor welfare systemic change to the new economic

realities and some “leftist” party leaders demanding to continue the welfare policy as

promised before. Due to the lack of proper decision and without strong leadership

with charisma and capacity of initiating and managing radical change, there was a

troubled situation for some months between June and October 2003 when the

popularity of government dropped 10-15 percent. However, with the completion of

the 2004 budget, the compromise was made, still the case showed again the limits of

welfare systemic change is the new ECE democracies.

The EP elections and the transnational party cooperation create a new situation

for HSP. The Hungarian Right has already begun to cooperate for the June 2004

elections with the EPP leadership. Hence without a similar agreement the electoral

18

chances of the HSP will be much lower. In spite of the urgent need in

Europeanization, there are still some strong negative features in the HSP’s preparation

for the EP elections. It is mainly the one-sided concentration on domestic politics, or

when turning outside, the lack of language skills and the insufficient knowledge about

the European policy universe are the obstacles to the efficient EP participation. In

addition, very few MPs have ambitions to become MEPs, it may be so that some

losers of the domestic infights will be “exported”. On the other side, there has been a

contest for this well-paid job of the MEPs among the lower ranks, with a competition

of the in-party interest groups for the seats on the list based on a false understanding

of the regional, gender etc. proportional representativeness. As a result, with the “EU

penetration” the split between the small EU-oriented party group and the domestically

oriented majority-party can be foreseen, a conflict through which yet the internal

Europeanization slowly begins. Moreover, Europeanization of politics has taken place

between the PES and the HSP, but not yet in the policy dimension, although strong

policy cooperation by the member-parties is also expected by the PES in the EP that

will be a painful exercise for the ECE parties, including the HSP.

This is a short history of the Hungarian chapter with permanent changes, with

new and new challenges for the ECE Social Democracy. The ECE parties have still

lagging behind in the internal Europeanization, yet they have changed a lot in this

long decade. Again there are hard times ahead for the ECE Social-democratic parties

due to the new conflicts generated by the EU accession. Basically, the EU

representation paradox is that the national elites support EU integration more

assertively than their populations, which is one side of the democratic deficit. In ECE

the pro-European leftist parties support the EU membership even more than the

national elites as a whole. Consequently, they will confront the difficulties and

disappointments of the EU accession more than the Euro-sceptic centre-right parties

but at the same time they can benefit more from the EU membership than their

competitors. The main issue is that now people see and accept benefits of the EU

membership for the country but they hardly see these benefits for themselves. With

the European social model the ECE populations may get closer and quicker to the

Social Construction of Democracy and this is a big historical chance of the ECE

Social Democracy. The Western Social-democracy has strongly influenced the

development of the ECE sister parties so far. They still have responsibility for

assisting the ECE social-democratic parties in their further social-democratization and

19

Europeanization. The further assistance is in their best interest because in the 2004 EP

elections the ECE sister parties’ contribution to the strength of the PES faction in the

European Parliament can be decisive. For the common success, further institution and

policy transfer is needed to the ECE social-democratic parties from the West to

complete their institutional reforms as an internal Europeanization.

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1 I have written a series of papers on the HSP (see Ágh, 2002) describing the

major features of the party and summarising the relevant literature that I do not repeat

here just indicate in great outlines. See also Crook et al, 2002: 77-78. 2 In my books (Ágh 1998a and 1998b) I have describe systematically all ECE

parties and the stages of the ECE political developments, therefore I give only a short

reference here. 3 In this part of paper I follow the arguments from my latest paper on the HSP

(in Delwit (ed.), Social Democracy East and West, Université Libre de Bruxelles,

2004) in great outlines. 4 There has been a large literature on the ECE trade unions (see e.g. Waller

and Myant, 1994; Hausner, Pedersen and Ronit, 1995; Orenstein, 1998; Cox and

Mason, 1999; and Cook, Orenstein and Rueschmeyer, 1999) but this issue needs a

separate treatment. 5 As Heinz Fisher argues, the Foundations of the Western parties have played

a great role in the Europeanization of the ECE parties (Fischer, 2003). He particularly

describes the role of European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity

(www.europeanforum.net) established in 1993. 6 This contrast between the “educated” and “non-educated” membership and

the resulting divergent electoral support is very big in Hungary. In addition, the

centre-right party, Fidesz increased this gap with its nationalist rhetoric and won the

elections in 1998. At the latest elections in 2002 the nationalist-traditionalist discourse

was also very successful in reaching and mobilizing the least educated and poorest

strata of the Hungarian society but failed to reach the majority. 7 It is characteristic that a fifty per cent pay-rise was necessary in Hungary in

public sector to get close to the salary level of the early nineties but otherwise medical

doctors, nurses and teachers would have left public sector in large quantities. 8 The forms of anti-EU tendencies vary from country to country in ECE. The

situation has been most complicated in Poland, see the Polish parties’ relationships to

the EU membership in Slomczynski and Shabad, 2003: 509-510.